The other day, I did a post about how much I loved a series of promos Channel 5 showed last year.1 It reminded me of the above: a promo that – as far as I’m aware – Channel 5 never actually broadcast.
It’s hardly surprising, really. I loved the Ask an Aussie promos because they were perfectly targeted and entertaining in their own right. The above promo cross-promotes – of all things – The Walking Dead and… The Wright Stuff. It’s one of the most entertaining TV promos I’ve ever seen… but how the bloody hell would you schedule it? The tone is entirely unsuitable for daytime, but it doesn’t really make that much sense to promote a daytime talk show late at night either.
But then, that’s the fun. The total incongruity of it all. Any promo which ends with Matthew Wright surrounded by a horde of killer zombies has to be worth something. (It has some particularly good sound design, too.) Just try to ignore the fact that – as with a lot of their US dramas – Channel 5 went on to drop The Walking Dead from its schedule. Ahem.
Fun fact: the breakdown loop that features during the promo is the actual breakdown loop Channel 5 uses if there is a problem, and the announcer is one of the actual Channel 5 continuity announcers. A bit of artistic licence is used for how quickly that announcement would make it to air, mind…
Disclaimer, in case you didn’t read it in the last article: I worked in Channel 5 TX until earlier this year. ↩
One comment
James W on 31 March 2014 @ 8am
OK, that’s a bit high concept isn’t it? Interesting that such a thing would actually get shot, because you’d have thought the tone issues would have been at the forefront of people’s minds first.
Comments on this post are now closed.